National Book Award–winning novelist and social critic William T. Vollmann is also (since his travels among the mujahideen in 1982 Afghanistan) an inveterate travel writer. Here are 19 pieces he chose for their variety of styles, moods, and quirkiness—to please his freight train–hopping friend Steve Jones, he tells us—from Paul Theroux's "The Wicked Coast" and Peter Gwin's "The Telltale Scribes of Timbuktu" to Kimberly Meyer's "Holy City of the Witchitas" and Pico Iyer's "Maximum India." Since its inception in 1915, the Best American series has become the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. For this title, as for each of the others, a series editor reviews hundreds of periodicals, then selects between 50 and 100 outstanding works. The guest editor—a recognized expert in the field—then pares the list down to the 20 or so very best pieces.